


When Dialogue Counts

by WhimsicalCircles



Category: Community
Genre: Anal Sex, Cuddling, First Time, M/M, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 22:33:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhimsicalCircles/pseuds/WhimsicalCircles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't so much a matter of figuring out how to ask, Troy had already done that by accident.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Dialogue Counts

Butt stuff. Butt stuff? It took on a markedly different tone depending on whether it was a joke made in passing, or whether it was a request that actually had tangible potential of being fulfilled. Troy also could have done with a bit more forethought regarding his timing (and method) of proposition: mumbling-slash-squeaking it into Abed's mouth while they were making out on their small apartment couch was _not_ the calm, dignified, panic-free scenario that Troy had been anticipating for this conversation. 

"Hm?" (See here, Abed did the _sensible_ thing of actually drawing his face slightly away from Troy's to speak to him.) Troy broke off, and averted his gaze to the best of his ability. He ended up staring at Abed's mouth instead, which wasn't particularly helpful.

"Butt stuff...?" he repeated, more clearly this time, but with some very justifiable hesitation. There was probably protocol for this kind of thing, this "first time requesting a somewhat embarrassing sex act from your best friend of three years and boyfriend of three-and-one-seventh weeks" thing. Protocol that would be written in a manual somewhere. But he'd have probably just skimmed the manual anyway. Or SparkNoted it. Or not even read the SparkNotes all the way through, and hoped that someone had summarized those somewhere. Or just given up completely and begged a random classmate for a quick rundown right outside the classroom two minutes before the test-- what was happening again?

Abed's expression cleared. "Got it." It morphed into one of those tiny Abed smiles, the kind that only Troy noticed. "Just for clarity, you're referring to penetrative anal sex." It wasn't really a question; there were many people for whom Abed struggled with deciphering their personal figurative expressions, but Troy was not one of them. 

Troy meanwhile nearly choked over Abed's words (a younger him would have backpedaled furiously and sputtered " _No, that's not it at all, I never said anything, leave me alone!_ " until he was blue in the face), but he collected himself, and nodded with a serenity that was especially odd for him under the circumstances, echoing the words back inside his head. He cleared his throat. "I mean just if you want to. And I'd rather do something for you, so it'd be totally cool for you to ask for stuff too, you know I'd do anything you did... But... yeah. _Anal sex_." Troy winced at the foreign feeling of the clinical name on his tongue. It had been so much easier just to say "butt stuff" and make a joke of it.

Abed rotated a bit in his seat on the couch, finding Troy's hand and holding it easily, comfortably."Thank you. But I'm good with doing what you like." He paused, tilting his head, looking for the right face to make. What he settled on was almost a smirk. "Your interest hasn't exactly been ambiguous, in fact I was considering making the offer myself." Abed paused again, and kissed him. "But I'm glad you beat me to it. We work better when we go off-script." 

"Yeah. We're cool like that." Was it out of bounds to handshake on that, even long after a bromance lost the b? On one hand the gesture felt like a remnant of when their relationship had still been missing a piece, but it was nonetheless so intrinsically theirs, so they still did it anyway. Troy savored the feeling of the awkwardness and discomfort slipping away as he squirmed closer to Abed, still facing him, and nestled his head on his chest. Of course he never should have had anything to worry about; Even if Abed wasn't into that sort of thing and had declined, he wouldn't have made any judgements in doing so. He was Abed, and he took people as they were. Perhaps Troy most of all. 

Somewhere in Troy's field of peripheral vision (that or his secret psychic practice was paying off) he could sense Abed quirking his eyebrows at him. Then without even missing a beat, Abed asked, straightforward and deadpan in a little burst of breath, "Do you want to start now?"

"I-- bluh-- wha?" _There_ was the awkwardness again. "Wait... Can we?" Good save.

"Sure. In preparation for the aforementioned offer I went out and bought everything we'd need. Britta helped." _Evil_ , Troy thought. Britta knew more about his sex life than he did sometimes. And knowing her, she'd ask for details on Monday... 

Eh, worth it. 

"O-okay." Remembering himself, Troy braced his back, fixing his posture and clearing all traces of stammer from his throat. If nothing else he was at least going to agree to sex like a man. "Yes. Alright, let's do it. Blanket fort?"

"Cool." Abed promptly stood up from the couch, crossed the apartment in a few quick strides, and stopped in front of a set of drawers. "One moment."

Troy nodded, and sat waiting on the couch as he watched Abed rustling through the drawers, perfect for hiding secret purchases in all their disorder and clutter (but of course endlessly frustrating to Annie for the same reason). Troy felt strange, lightheaded and dreamy but also tense and shaky, his heart swelling with happiness at the same time that it was threatening to beat out of his chest. He wondered briefly how his high school friends would have mocked him for getting so flustered (let alone the whole gay relationship thing, that was another can of worms entirely) before deciding he didn't care. He loved being with Abed, and he loved the fact that the prospect of them sharing something new and bringing their intimacy to another level (he realized somewhat belatedly that they had never even seen each other fully naked before) was so comforting, exciting, and scary all at once.

Abed turned around, having found what he was looking for, and beckoned Troy towards him, filling in a bit of the distance himself to stop just outside the bedsheet curtains. Troy poked amusedly, maybe a bit shyly, at the Star-Wars-logo print sheets before reaching down to take Abed's hand again and walk them into the blanket fort together. 

The lighting took on a different sort of tone inside the quiet little nest of pillows and blankets (plus a bunk bed): warm and soft and dim, filtered through layers of multicolored fabrics. It was... romantic, that's what it was; it was the closest they would ever come to candles and rose petals anyway. Abed guided Troy over to sit down opposite him in a pile of cushions, stacked in a corner atop a crumpled spare duvet, and after brushing away some scattered laundry, laid the condom packets and lubricant bottle he had bought out between them like a hand of cards.

Troy swallowed uneasily. Right. Unlike a lot of what they did, this had to be premeditated. Planned and coordinated. Troy had never gotten how that would work, accustomed as he was to the spontaneous and seamless transitions you always saw in the movies, from kissing, to touching, to the rest of it. Even with Abed, who liked to ask before doing anything in order to avoid jumbling social cues, it was always such a quick and simple bit of communication, a clipped little " _Is this okay? Is this what you want?_ " answered immediately by a breathy " _yes_ ", because everything Abed did was always okay. More than okay, amazing. Awesome. Troy wished he was better at returning the favor; it had taken him three years of friendship to become a natural at reading Abed, and sometimes he found he still had stuff to learn. And sex was a whole other language, one in which Abed hardly made any faces or sounds, so Troy had to fly blind and improvise, and he was never sure whether what he was doing was good or not because whenever he asked, Abed always told him he was doing fine, but of course friends don't lie to each other, but then again maybe that rule got canceled out when they started dating, and right now Troy wanted to scream into a pillow because he just didn't _get it_ , but he really wanted to. He wanted Abed to feel as good as Abed made him feel.

"Okay, so my knowledge of this is limited to Britta's explanation, which is of questionable origins in and of itself, and what I was able to gather from Wikipedia. Plus some common sense. So we should--"

Troy blinked, and leaned over to gently touch his fingers to the back of Abed's hand, to pause him. "Hey, Abed?" And Abed stopped to listen, his eyes widening inquisitively. Troy gave a nervous little cough, trying not to think about how Abed sometimes looked like he could see through people's clothes, or into their minds, and continued, "Which... um, arrangement... would you rather have? For this, I mean. I hadn't really been thinking about that until now, like I just like butt stuff, it doesn't really matter... whose." The words didn't sound any less ridiculous than they had in his head. 

Troy wondered absently how the people in the pornos found the time to decide on this top and bottom stuff without ruining the mood. He found himself acutely, painfully aware of the air, the quiet, every part of himself giving away his embarrassment, Abed's pondering, data-processing face, the cozy and intimate atmosphere of the blanket fort daring and goading them to _get on with it already_. And the suspense wasn't helping; had he already ruined it? It certainly wasn't the sexiest he'd ever felt. 

"You remember when we fought, right?" Abed asked, finally. Troy nodded, too busy wincing at the memory to be confused as to where this was going. "When you said ' _I guess you'll just have to trust that you're gonna have to trust me._ '" (He put on his expertly-crafted Troy voice as he quoted him verbatim) "Well, admittedly the context is slightly different, but I want to trust you, and for you to know that I do. I was trying to do that before by not giving you any instructions or preferences of my own, but I understand now how that could just come across as apathy."

"Abed..."

"So, if it suits you, Constable," Abed said, adopting a hint of the Inspector's accent and smarmy grin as he handed Troy a condom and a bottle of lube. He was clearly trying to lighten the mood. "It would be an honor to entrust myself to you tonight. Body and soul, as they say."

Troy smiled. This he got. "That would suit me quite well, Inspector." 

He still felt a little silly as he shuffled across the floor on his knees and leaned in to kiss Abed. When it wasn't just a spontaneous and unspoken transition from one thing to another, it still always felt a bit stilted and staged starting out, like they were intentionally following a scripted set of events from point A to point B and onwards, but he melted into it soon enough, the tension finally beginning to drain away as Abed kissed him back. Troy crept closer in on his knees, leaning forward and down onto Abed to press their mouths more firmly together. 

Considering the fact that they were propped up on pillows and lying flush against each other in a somewhat stuffy fort, it became an actual necessity to preemptively shed a layer of clothing apiece: Abed, in his position beneath Troy, wriggled out of his cardigan as Troy unzipped his own hoodie and cast it aside. Troy considered saying " _You're next_ " in his most threatening Batman voice to their remaining T-shirts before deciding that that'd be too dorky. Besides, Abed would always be better at that voice. Troy considered, settling back down on top of him to lick and suck at his lower lip, that Abed's Batman voice actually might very well do it for him. Put that on the checklist of things to try sometime. 

Troy didn't even notice his hands hovering at Abed's sides until he felt his wrists being gripped, loosely and gently, and his hands being guided into place. Abed drew back, just for a moment, the usual question evident in his knitted brow and slightly parted lips: " _Is this okay? Is this what you want?_ " Immediately, without even having to hear the question, Troy breathed " _yes,_ " running his sturdy hands up and down Abed's sides, over his ribs, under his shirt, as Abed, his own hands now free of Troy's wrists, responded in kind to Troy's go-ahead and attempted some experimental touches and caresses of his own. His features, his gaze, sharpened in his intense focus on learning from what Troy was doing and replicating it to the best effect he could manage, ghosting his long fingers over Troy's back just as Troy was lifting him slightly from the pillows to tuck his hands beneath him and massage just below his shoulder blades. Troy supposed that meant he was doing alright himself.

The achievement of a certain quantity of touching and rubbing and stroking found Troy pushing Abed's shirt further and further up, exposing his slim stomach, his chest, until leaving it on became entirely superfluous and Troy slipped it off easily over Abed's head. Meanwhile Abed worked Troy's shirt up towards the same fate, up and off and into the vague laundry pile off to the side that had a history of making countless socks mysteriously vanish. Troy bent back down again and gave Abed's lips one last kiss before departing for the newly exposed skin in front of him, placing soft lapping kisses on his jaw, the side of his neck, the hollow of his throat, his collarbones, until he arrived at a nipple and slowly, tentatively, closed his lips around it. He kept his eyes locked upwards on Abed's face and gave him a questioning rotation of his thumb, or rather the fist it was attached to: _Thumbs-up or thumbs-down? Horizontal thumb of neutrality?_ Abed opened his mouth to respond, but that only allowed for the escape of a faint gasp as Troy retracted his tongue and sucked, pulling Abed up and further into his mouth, so he just gave the thumbs-up and left it at that, letting his head fall back to rest on the pillows. 

Abed arched his back, supporting his weight on his shoulders, to give himself some leverage over his skinny jeans. Troy pulled his mouth away from his nipple to help him, all senses tuned in to the silent guidance that Abed was going out of his way to offer him, to make him feel more comfortable and not so lost. Troy was pretty sure that he loved Abed a lot for that; he felt secure, trusted, and they were safe here with each other, in a fort that kept out all the scary "normal" adult things like homework and parking tickets. As Abed worked the jeans off, he did a little shimmy that was adorable and maybe a little bit sexy and all Troy knew was that it made him laugh and want to kiss him again. So he did, fumbling with his own (non-skinny) jeans in the process, occasionally bringing one hand up to stroke through Abed's hair or cup his face, brushing a thumb over his cheek.

There was a bit of rolling and stumbling over each other and accidental elbowing as they alternately pushed and pulled their respective pants off and out from under them, but they managed it, Troy finishing his first to lend a final helping tug at getting Abed's free of his left ankle. Both pairs of jeans removed, Troy ran an admiring eye over Abed's white briefs, feeling pretty dorky about his own Spiderman underwear until Abed gave him a comically over-exaggerated wink (complete with a click of his tongue). That gave Troy the confidence he needed to slide his fingers into the waistband of Abed's underwear, looking up at him for confirmation. Abed nodded, lifting his hips off the ground again, and Troy slowly pulled them off, Abed exhaling in a long, soft sigh as his skin was exposed to the air. 

Troy hesitated for a moment, seeing Abed lying there in his entirety, aching to reach out and touch. To feel him beneath his fingertips. He gave Abed an embarrassed half-smile before scrunching his own briefs down and over his knees, to his calves, and kicking them off. In his attempt to re-steady himself over Abed, Troy's elbows wobbled, and he clumsily tipped backwards, and Abed closed his eyes, smiling and shaking his head, breathing a puff of air out through his nose. Maybe that was what a real Abed laugh looked like; in any case it helped Troy forget to be shy as he laughed too, brushing himself off and sitting up again. He felt exposed, naked ( _duh_ , he scolded himself in his head, _you are naked_ ), but in a good way. It was like the final puzzle piece that they had been lacking before, in their timid quick trials over the last few weeks with hands and mouths, where they had clothes on and lights on, working on borrowed attention between episodes of Inspector Spacetime or wondering what'll be for dinner or when Annie'll be home. This had a sense of completion to it, of being a culmination that they had been working up to, where they were fixed singlemindedly on each other with an intensity of focus that felt hot, sharp, heavy, but again in a good way.

Troy kept his eyes fixed on Abed as he felt around behind him for the lube that he had dropped ages ago, saw him fidgeting slightly: shifting his weight back and forth, twiddling his fingers at his sides for a few seconds before catching himself and stopping, a small frown forming at the corner of his mouth. 

"Nervous?" Troy asked, more shakily than he would have cared to admit, palm finally locating the small bottle. He watched Abed turning the question over in his head, parsing out how to answer. 

"Maybe. But I shouldn't be. I should be the stoicism that balances out your anxiety." Abed propped himself up on his elbows to be at eye level with Troy. He had his problem-solving face on, as if running algorithims and rearranging lists to account for this inconsistency. "If it helps, we could keep it slow. Would you mind?"

"Not at all," Troy said, relieved. In part relieved at being allowed to go slow, since he was nervous too. But Abed already knew that. Troy grinned, and Abed, contented, leaned in to kiss him this time, with precise, even strokes of his tongue across Troy's lips, building up gradually until Troy deepened the kiss, moaning unashamedly into it.

Troy found new ground to cover in his second, slower pass over Abed's body: all his hard, bony angles; the lean muscles of his stomach and arms; the inside of his long thighs where the skin was softest, smoothest. Troy's mouth and hands wandered everywhere, the pads of his fingertips skimming gently, almost tickling over Abed's skin. Once Troy learned to pick up on the little stuff, he realized that Abed actually was rather responsive, in an understated sort of way that was quite like him. He would make tiny, barely audible sounds, little hums and hitches, or his eyelids would flutter closed at a particularly pleasant sensation, and Troy wanted to tune himself in to all of it, become fluent in the body language that people insisted Abed didn't have, but he knew otherwise. 

At the first tentative brush of Troy's fingers over Abed's cock, hard against his stomach, Abed's whole body reacted at once. Back arching, legs parting, lifting his hips to fit a pillow under his lower back. 

"Troy," he said, barely above a whisper, raising his eyebrows and staring pointedly at the lube bottle just off to the side. Right. That. Troy grabbed it and squeezed a generous amount onto his fingers, and paused, awaiting Abed's instructions, not willing to let maneuvers like these be guided by faulty intuition and hormones. Best to listen to the guy who actually knew his limits. Encyclopedically. 

"Alright, go ahead." Abed spoke slowly, between deep breaths. "Start with one finger, and go from there." He gave Troy an encouraging smile, a little nod of his head. "You can do this."

If anyone's encouragement was worth something, it was Abed's, so Troy nodded back. Slowly, carefully, he pressed a single finger into Abed, then waited, let him adjust. He felt Abed wince a little, then slowly move his hips, rocking slightly into the odd sensation, the pressure, spreading his legs wider. Troy added a second finger, and following Abed's lead, tried something new, crooking them up and stroking from the inside. His eyes flicked back up to Abed's face: he was flushed, and biting his lip, the frown lines on his forehead disappearing as he relaxed into Troy's touch. Troy's fingers eventually found and slowly dragged against the spot that his high school health teacher had told him was imaginary (in a long, drawn-out, lecture-slash-conspiracy-theory that was rife with oddly specific Trojan metaphors and misattributed blame for the fall of Ancient Greece; yeah, Troy didn't understand it any better now than he did then), and that elicited a sound from Abed that Troy hadn't heard since the Dungeons & Dragons game. 

_(Troy: 1. Prostate-Denying Fraud: 0.)_

Troy introduced one more finger, gradually splaying them, gently, cautiously, keeping an eye on Abed's reactions to find his threshold, and ease way back if he was doing too much before building up again. Meanwhile he was making his best effort at one-handedly unwrapping and rolling the condom on, and his lack of success thereof eventually resulted in Abed sitting up and reaching over to give him a hand with that, and a quick stroke of his fingers from the base of Troy's cock up to the head for good measure. 

"Ngh... not fair," Troy groaned. He was already desperately hard, just from seeing the way Abed rode his fingers, hearing his little gasps and moans. But Abed's hands were not to be argued with, not when they were helpfully offering Troy the lube bottle and squeezing some into his hand for him. Right there, cooperation and teamwork. In his mind Troy likened Abed and himself to a well-oiled machine, and _yes_ , he was _definitely_ aware of the multiple levels on which that particular metaphor worked. He coated himself eagerly, thoroughly until he was completely slick, and shifted into position as he gradually drew his fingers out of Abed. 

Abed's eyes were wide, his breathing labored, his mouth slightly open as he lay back for Troy and gazed up at him, hands skimming down Troy's sides to his hips, just barely curling his fingertips over the pelvic bone there. 

"Time?" Troy said on an exhale, eyebrows arching. 

"9:47." 

Troy stifled a laugh. "I mean, _is it_ time? For--"

Abed didn't answer, just tightened his grip on Troy's hips and pulled, head swooping up to kiss him and cut off whatever it was he was about to say. Troy shifted, leaning forward, drawn in that direction anyway by Abed's kiss, and eased his way inside him. 

All other forms of communication unavailable, Troy felt for feedback from Abed in the movement of Abed's mouth against his, how he would flinch back if Troy was pushing in too quickly, how he would make a little sound and press his tongue further into Troy's mouth when he got it right. Once Troy had settled into an agreeable equilibrium, slowly rocking his hips, with Abed beneath him beginning to move as well to match his pace, he could at last revel in the feeling of it: Abed's responsiveness, the warm pressure of his body, his generous little movements where he would buck upward to meet Troy halfway and tighten around him. Troy moved, slowly at first, then a little bit faster, leaving time to let Abed catch up whenever he adjusted. 

One particularly bold thrust from Troy led to Abed beginning to say his name, as he craned his neck and pressed their foreheads together, letting it out with his breath in a raspy whisper, just outside of Troy's lips. Troy was saying Abed's name too, building it up into a steady chant that Troy couldn't help but lose himself in; he liked hearing Abed's name, the sound of it, even from himself. Troy buried his face in Abed's shoulder, arms coming up to wrap around his back and pull him close, every inch of his skin craving contact. Abed was speaking and making sounds right into his ear, saying his name now with each one of Troy's downward thrusts into him, each crest of pleasure that shook through him when Troy hit his mark, made him shudder and groan and made Troy smile into his shoulder, holding him steady.

Troy kept smiling and laughing throughout the whole thing, which was cause for Abed to peer curiously at him amidst all the moans, the gasps, the utterances of names, until Abed placed himself outside of what he was feeling and listened until he understood. All the sounds, the frantic movements that Troy was dragging out of him, one by one, were those of exuberance and pleasure, and that to Troy was _amazing_ , being able to make Abed feel so good like that. Neither were quite able to comprehend all of it -- their intrinsic differences would always leave a few gaps in the transmission -- but chose simply to take things as they were, wing it, abandon all pretense of things being predictable or straightforward, and give themselves up to the sensations. Troy's hand, clenched on the back of Abed's neck, lost its grip from the sweat, and Abed collapsed backwards onto the blankets to writhe into the steadily increasing rhythm. Abed hooked a leg around Troy's waist, his heel rubbing circles against Troy's back in time with it. 

Seeing Abed move like that under him, _feeling_ him, Troy suddenly grew aware of the tingling pleasure that was building, spreading through his whole body, thrumming and pulsing and making him dizzy, unfocused. He blinked the sensation away just long enough to slide his hand up Abed's thigh, wrap his fingers around and work his way up Abed's cock in one long gentle pull, before losing himself to the overwhelming rush of bright hot feeling that scrambled his thoughts, his senses, his perception of time. His hand jerked involuntarily, fingers twitching over Abed's head before regaining their grip and contracting around the base, just enough so that only a few strokes later, Abed strained his neck back, arched upward, breathing out Troy's name as he came into Troy's hand, over his stomach. All in all the timing hadn't been too bad; Troy was still on his aftershocks, winding down, still tingling and a little numbed. 

Troy slid sideways off of Abed to cozy up next to him, pulling a blanket over them and tucking the corners around their sides as the adrenaline wore off and he found himself starting to shiver. Abed was making eye contact, looking at him expectantly, and that was how Troy realized he was grinning, in the way that people did when they wanted to say something, and figured he might as well say it, because it was true:

"Butt stuff is _awesome._ "

Abed smiled, looked up at the blanket canopy above them, then back to Troy. "That's good. I really liked it too." Troy's grin widened, and Abed returned it with a little nod of his head. "Thank you," he said after a few more seconds. It was a soft, innocent sort of thing for Abed to say; it reminded Troy of the time he had helped him save Fievel, and had gotten those words of thanks for his trouble, kind and sincere, and by Abed's standards pretty affectionate. Troy wished he could have appreciated that as much back then as he did now, now when it made him light up and feel warm inside and want to kiss Abed, which he did, slowly and sweetly. Abed's fingers fluttered lightly over Troy's face, still not quite able to land. Troy wondered what Abed thought about when he hesitated to touch people, but didn't ask. 

They lay there for a while, curled around each other under the blankets. Troy lazily draped an arm over Abed's chest, stretched, wriggled his foot when it fell asleep. At some point he got Daybreak stuck in his head and hummed a few bars of it until Abed joined him. They stopped when Troy forgot how the next part went. 

"Hey, Abed?"

"Yeah, Troy?"

"Do you think Daybreak would work as porn music?"

"Hm. Probably not. Wrong tempo, and it would at least need more bass."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

It had been an optimistic thought. 

(The disappointment lasted all of four seconds though, because once Abed rolled over to kiss him, and pulled back with the Idea Face™ in full effect, dying to launch into detail about plans for a new cosplay scheme or construction project, Troy completely forgot to be anything but all ears.

"So what I was thinking, was that we would partner up with a superhero motif, and make a city to save out of refrigerator boxes...")


End file.
